Functions that return values

An example of a function that returns a value is the sqrt() function. The sqrt() function accepts a single parameter between its brackets (the number to root) and returns the actual root of the number.

Here's an example usage of the sqrt function:

cout << sqrt( 4 ) << endl;

The sqrt() function does something analogous to what the chef did when preparing the pizzas.

As a caller of the function, you do not care about what goes on inside the body of the sqrt() function; that information is irrelevant since all you want is the result of the square root of the number that you are passing.

Let's declare our own simple function that returns a value, as shown in the following code:

int sum(int a, int b)
{
  return a + b;
}

The following screenshot shows the anatomy of a function with parameters and a returned value:

The sum function is very basic. All it does is take two int numbers a and b, sums them up together, and returns a result. You might say that...